It's no secret that low education levels correlate to incarceration rates; that a criminal record limits job prospects; that families and communities suffer when a large percentage of local men are sent away to prison.

A state prosecutor and defense attorneys for a murderer scheduled for execution next week will argue before the Arizona Supreme Court Wed as to whether the state has to reveal its source of the drugs needed for execution.

The Arizona Republic has learned that one or more of the drugs may have been imported, raising questions as to their legality under federal drug laws.

One of them, sodium thiopental, a barbiturate used mostly as an anesthetic, is in short supply nationwide.

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A Texas prosecutor accused of bias for describing an executed man as a "guilty monster" defended his comments Friday, while his colleagues on a commission investigating the case said he might have jeopardized the integrity of their inquiry.

WASHINGTON — In the course of an hourlong argument at the Supreme Court on Wednesday about a death row inmate’s quest to test DNA evidence, the justices asked neither of the questions that people without legal training might have thought crucial: Why won’t Texas prosecutors consent to the testing? And could the results show that the inmate, Henry W. Skinner, is innocent of the triple murder that sent him to death row?

Hank Skinner sat in a Texas prison and relished his final meal — a chicken thigh, a salad, French fries, catfish, a double bacon cheeseburger and a milkshake. He was set to die by lethal injection in less than an hour for the murder of his girlfriend and her two sons.

BRISTOL, R.I. — Betty Anne Waters still greets her lunch customers here as they tuck into pints of Guinness and Reuben sandwiches at Aidan’s, a pub hard by the harbor in this small, boat-building town.